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Bush Calls for End to Earmarks in Spending
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ShareJanuary 03, 2007 1:50 PM
ABC News' Bret Hovell and Z. Byron Wolf Report: Today in his brief remarks at the Rose Garden the President called on the 110th Congress to end "earmarks" and "pork barrel spending", and reiterated his oft-repeated request for a line-item veto.
"Earmarks often divert precious funds from vital priorities like national defense," the President said. "And each year they cost the taxpayers billions of dollars."
Calling earmarking a "dead-of-the-night" process, the President laid out his ideas to end it. One of them was the line item veto which would grant the President the authority to cancel specific provisions of a bill without vetoing the entire package.
President Bush is not the first United States President to support the line-item veto -- the six presidents leading up to Bush supported it as well.
Bush also called for the power of Line Item Veto in March (though, technically it was a "line item rescission" since the Supreme court ruled that the line item veto unconstitutional in 1998).
The proposal for a line item rescission passed in the then Republican-controlled House in June with some Democratic support. It was never brought up in the Senate, despite support from most Republicans, then-majority leader Bill Frist, and 2004 Presidential aspirant Sen. John Kerry.
In the 109th Congress, the bill did not have the support of incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. A spokesman for Reid's office said it is "unlikely" we will see a vote on the line item measure in the near future. On the Bush speech as a whole, one Democratic staffer referred to it as "nothing but a PR offensive."
Bush can probably find some common ground on earmark reform with Democrats. The incoming Democratic chairmen for the appropriations committees in the House and the Senate, Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Representative David Obey of Wisconsin, announced they'll put a moratorium on all earmark spending until the Congress can change the process. The Senate will take up Lobby and Ethics reform next Monday as its first legislative order of business and expects to spend a week on the issue.
January 3, 2007 in White House | Permalink | User Comments (0)
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